At a time in the early fifties when film noir was dying in the States, Melville kept the torch alight?then handed back the flame to the Americans when Hollywood entered its modernist phase of noir with films like Point Blank?which virtually reinvented the genre. Lee Marvin, the lethal "Walker," double-crossed and left for dead on Alcatraz, comes back from the grave to collect his money and can find only faceless executives and plastic cards. A fabulous, vicious allegory for modern corporate Amerca, filmed in a dreamlike, sensuous style, all of which may be the last few seconds of a dying man's thoughts.-Chris Peachment, National Film Theatre, London